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March, the 5 th 2024, the last two satellites launched during the 12th launch of Galileo the 28 th, were officially integrated into the Galileo constellation, thus ensuring the sustainability of all services in orbit.
Now Galileo has 25 operational satellites out of 30 satellites placed in orbit. 5 satellites being currently considered unusable for some or unavailable for others (¹). Read more …
March, the GNS 3000 to Global Navigation Systems has been available since November 2022 (¹). It replaces the GNS 2000 Plus. Now equipped with a Bluetooth transmitter 5.0, it has an SD Card connector to record position data continuously.
Compatible with Apple products, it is mainly aimed at devices not equipped with GPS : iPod Touch and iPad WiFi all models. It can also be used with all PDAs, Bluetooth-enabled laptops and tablets. It has a Li-Ion battery offering a battery life of 10 hours continuously.
[Update 15 May 2024] Warning : from iOS/iPadOS 17.x, a update of the device is essential. But it can only be done from an Android device.
Global navigation satellite systems GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System), have become the primary source of Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT1) for ships and marine operations. GNSS is also used for the automatic identification system (AIS2). Unfortunately, GNSS is recognized to be vulnerable to jamming and spoofing, intentional or not, that may result in the loss of positioning information, or, still worse, inaccurate positioning information. Read more …
The arrival of Macs with Apple M1 processors and macOS systems 11 “Big Sur” and macOS 12 “Monterey” caused disappointment among GPS users connected via USB and/or Bluetooth for their navigation applications.
In USB, latest driver Prolific V.2.2.2 is now universal for GPS BU-353xx from GlobalSat. As for the GNS3000 (¹) in Bluetooth it always suffers from an instability of the interface for the connection of multiple devices, instability that unfortunately does not yet seem to be fully fixed. Read more …
Obviously Garmin® has long teeth ! After Active Captain and Navionics charts, Garmin® has just announced the purchase of Vesper Marine, specialized in high-end AIS transponders (¹). Read more …
I'm always being asked - and have been for ages - how much confidence we can put in the GPS on our tablets and smartphones. Probably at the risk of repeating myself, I persist in asserting that our mobile devices are provided with the most accurate GPS receivers that can be found in civilian use, especially for recreational boating. Read more …
Good news, a year after its appearance on the first smartphones (¹), Apple finally integrates a GNSS receiver chipset compatible GALILEO. The iPhone 8/8+ and soon iPhone X are now equipped with the Snapdragon X16 LTE modem MDM9655 from Qualcomm, which includes a multi-GNSS receiver : GPS (USA), GLONASS (Russia), GALILEO (Europe) and QZSS (Japan) (²).
[Update 15/12/2017] The iPhone 6S and 7 are now compatible with Galileo signals.
To date, the constellation of Chinese GPS satellites BeiDou-2 covers only part of East Asia and the Western Pacific. With the commissioning of GALILEO European GPS late 2016, the replacement scheduled of U.S. 2nd generation GPSII by the 3rd generation GPSIII, the launch into orbit of the 3rd generation of Russian GLONASS-M satellites, China intends to catch up with global coverage forced march. Read more …
Less than a month before the launch by Ariane 5 of four new satellites carrying the GALILEO constellation to 18 satellites, manufacturers of tracking components have already presented their new tracking chips supporting European GNSS. This allowed the Spanish company BQ to offer the first “Galileo-ready” smartphone at the beginning of September., equipped with processor Qualcomm Snapdragon 652, l’Aquarius X5 Plus.
We might have expected to find the same chip in the iPhone 7 from Apple, which has since fitted the iPhone 4S and the iPad 3 all of its mobile devices with Qualcomm communications processors, integrating GPS reception (US) and GLONASS (Russian), it's nothing. With this latest smartphone, Apple reconnects with Broadcom, sidelined since 2012 to perform these functions, by integrating a chip BCM47734.
Early January 2011 I wrote that I started the year in a bad mood (¹) After finding repeated incompetence of Apple sellers, during the Christmas holidays, concerning devices they sold, mainly iPad and iPhone. Unfortunately, I note that 5 years later, Nothing has changed, it is to despair !